


Next

by deedreamer



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, New Year's Eve, Prompt Fic, Sweet/Hot, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-01 23:28:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17253383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deedreamer/pseuds/deedreamer
Summary: Prompt:"Ben and Rey decide to attend Finn and Rose’s wedding as friends since they’re both single. This somehow leads to bed sharing, awkward boners, and smut."I hope it's close... I only had like 15 hours to write it so... please be kind!





	Next

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hormonal_Trashbag](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hormonal_Trashbag/gifts), [Trish47](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trish47/gifts).



> This was going to a treat for the RFFA but since I just decided to do it today, I didn't quite make the midnight EST deadline. Ooops! But please accept my gift anyway. 
> 
> For Hormonal_Trashbag, who left the original prompt, and for Trish47, who's quickly become one of my very favorite people over at The Writing Den, and who chose this prompt and sent me off to the races today. I hope you both enjoy this little one-shot!
> 
> <3 HAPPY NEW YEAR, REYLOS.

 

The thick vellum of the invitation is smooth against Rey’s fingertips. She stares down at it and re-reads the RSVP date. It’s definitely still tomorrow. And she definitely still does _not_ have a date.

Two of her three bestest friends are getting married -- to each other, naturally -- and Rey had really hoped over the last year spent helping to plan what is sure to be a most epic party that she’d be spending Finn and Rose’s reception living it up -- drinking, laughing, and dancing the night away with someone special of her own.

She sits back in her desk chair and releases a sigh. She’s got ten minutes left until lunch is over. Might as well get it over with. Grabbing her cell from her desk, she hits Ben’s name and listens to it ring once.

“‘’Sup?” Ben says in answer.

Rey groans. He’s so obnoxious that sometimes she thinks he’s worse than the tenth graders she teaches. “ _Why_ do you do that?”

“Because I know how much you love it,” he snarks. Rey rolls her eyes but can’t help the little smile that tugs at her lips. Ben’s a complete idiot half the time, but he’s her second-oldest friend after Finn, and, well… she’s just used to him and his ridiculousness. “No, seriously,” he mumbles, sounding as if he’s just shoved an entire tennis ball in his mouth, “what’s up?”

“What are you eating?” Rey asks, absently running her fingertip over her worn and time-softened cover of _Macbeth_.

“Donut.” Rey miraculously manages to make out the single word, jealousy prickling as she shoves another baby carrot with hummus in her face.

How Ben can eat the trash he does and still be in such good shape, she’ll never understand. Or forgive, for that matter. “Asshole,” she mutters.

She hears Ben swallow and then giggle like a little girl. “Sorry.”

Again, she rolls her eyes -- her usual state of expression with Ben, to be honest -- and replies curtly. “No you’re not.”

“Yeah, I’m really not.”

“Okay. I called for a reason, you turd.”

“Shoot,” Ben says cheerfully.

“Did you RSVP to Rose and Finn’s wedding yet?”

A long pause. “Was I supposed to?”

 _Oh dear Lord_. “Yes. By tomorrow.”

“Oh. Whoops.”

“Well I haven’t either because I was waiting to see if I’d have a plus one, and I don’t, so was thinking… do you want to just go together?”

 

* * *

 

Ben holds the phone to his ear as he flings his apartment door open, powdered sugar all over his lips. He drops his grocery bag on the small dining table and heads over to his desk and laptop, knowing he has only a few minutes to wrap up this call with Rey before he needs to be online for a coaching session.

No matter how much he loves when Rey calls him a turd, he knows he needs to put a move on.

“Shoot,” he says, pulling his chair out from his desk and flopping down unceremoniously.

He hears Rey’s desk chair in her classroom squeak. “Did you RSVP to Rose and Finn’s wedding yet?”

Ben grimaces, looking around the inbox on his desk for the envelope. He knows it’s in there… somewhere. Maybe. “Was I supposed to?”

He can practically hear Rey roll her eyes over the phone. “Yes. By tomorrow.”

He winces, and tries to bury his guilty smile even though he knows there’s no one there to see it. “Oh. Whoops.”

“Well I haven’t either because I was waiting to see if I’d have a plus one, and I don’t, so was thinking… do you want to just go together?”

Ben leans back in his chair, wiggling his mouse to wake up his laptop. “Um, yeah,” he replies with a shrug. “Sure.”

Rey exhales on the other side of the line. “Okay, great. I’m wearing purple, so… don’t clash with me.”

He’s never claimed to be up on fashion, but Ben can’t really think of anything that would clash with purple. He says as much. “What exactly would not match purple?”

“I have no idea,” Rey replies with a chuckle. “Alright, I’ve gotta go get ready for fourth period so I’ll catch you later for wing night?”

Even though he just shoved a donut in his mouth, Ben’s stomach rumbles at the thought of his regular Tuesday night order of Buffalo wings with their friends. “Definitely,” he affirms, and says goodbye to Rey.

Ben Solo, despite outward appearances to the contrary, really does have his act together.

He might look the part of the perennial playboy, but he’s actually a fairly successful entrepreneur, having started an online-based executive coaching gig after getting a final certification once he’d finished his MBA. Ben spends his days as a sounding board, helping his clients “set goals, achieve self-awareness, and unlock their potential.”

Ben pulls up the electronic file for his one o’clock call, and quickly reviews his client’s details before their first official session. Frankly, he feels a complete sense of relief that Rey asked him to go with her to Finn and Rose’s wedding. He’d been too busy with work to try to find a date, and he did not want to spend the night hitting on bridesmaids… especially since there wouldn’t be any other than Rose’s very married and very pregnant sister, Paige.

After all, he and Rey have been best friends since they met freshman year, living in the same residence hall -- their dorm being the only one on campus that had both women’s and men’s quarters sharing a same floor. They’d met on move-in day, as they’d both been navigating their hallway, sharing the same expressions of confusion as they anxiously wondered aloud if their bathrooms would be co-ed, too.

Spoiler: they weren’t.

They’d each pushed the swinging door open to their own bathrooms, only to find themselves standing right next to each other thirty minutes later in the gymnasium for freshman orientation.

Ben smiled, remembering how they’d done a double-take as they glanced next to whom they stood, and laughed awkwardly. That same evening, Rey introduced Ben to Finn, and Finn met and went ga-ga for Rey’s new roommate Rose, and the rest, they say, is history.

Over the years, he and Rey had been to plenty of events together -- as friends, of course --  from his college fraternity formals to Rey’s faculty and staff holiday parties. His charcoal suit would be good with her purple dress, and really, that was about all Ben needed to worry about. Rey would RSVP for the two of them, and he could give up trying to find his invitation in his mess of an inbox. Complete and total win.

His laptop alarm dings and Ben grabs his headset. He dials his client’s number and waits for an answer. “Hi, this is Ben Solo from Equinox Coaching.”

 Yeah, everything is _all_ good. Couldn’t be better.

 

* * *

 

“Oh, Rose,” Paige exhales, her eyes filling with tears as she watches her younger sister step up on the pedestal at the salon. “You look so beautiful,” she gushes. 

Rey nods, her eyes equally as misty. “You really do, Rose… you’re absolutely stunning.” 

“Aww, you guys,” Rose squeaks, waving her hands in front of her own face as if she could stay her own tears with the motion. 

“Well,” Rey says, “I’d say this final fitting is good to go, wouldn’t you?” she asks her friend’s reflection in the mirror.

“Yep!” Rose grins. “And you, my friend, will be up here next!”

Rey blushes and ducks her head. “C’mon, Rose. I don’t even have a boyfriend right now. I think we have time.”

“Oh!” Paige perks up, swatting Rey’s thigh from where she sits, her other hand resting on the giant basketball of her belly. “That’s _right!_ I heard you and Ben finally got your shit together,” she says, eyes crinkling joyfully.

Rey furrows her brow and huffs out a guffaw. “No,” she denies, “don’t be silly. We’re just going as friends. Neither of us have our acts together enough to even find ourselves dates and now we’re stuck with each other.” Rey shrugs, catching Rose’s eye as she gives her friend a sly smile. “At least there won’t be any awkward photos of failed boyfriends or girlfriends in your wedding album.”

“That’s true,” Rose says with a smile, stepping down off the pedestal. Paige pushes herself to a stand, gingerly navigating her eight month pregnant belly, and starts to undo the pearl buttons down the back of Rose’s gown.

“Eh,” Paige says, clicking her tongue. “I don’t buy it.”

Rey reaches under Rose’s gown and yanks down the crinoline slip, hanging it back up. “Buy what?”

“You and Ben. You’re most certainly not _stuck_ together. If anything, you two are long overdue to get together.”

“Ben.” Rey states, deadpan. “Ben Solo?” she asks, her brow raising in suspicion. “He’s an idiot.”

Paige grins at Rey and sighs, ever put out. “If you ask me, you’re _both_ idiots.”

Rey chuckles. She can’t possibly think what’s gotten into Paige, who’s normally so astute and introspective. Is she joking right now? “What the hell are you talking about?”

“You and Ben,” Paige repeats. “You’re a perfect match,” she says shaking her head in disbelief as she finishes undoing the last of her sister’s buttons. “How can you not see it?”

 _What’s there to see_? Rey thinks.

She and Ben have known each other since they were eighteen years old. Now, at almost twenty-seven, they’re just bigger, older, less poor versions of the dorks and nerds they’d been when the met outside the bathrooms on the second floor of Falcon Hall.

Ben… who shoves his face with donuts and burgers. He drives his convertible around town like a complete tool, Ray-Bans on. He obnoxiously says things like ‘’sup” and actually uses the term “sun’s out, guns out” un-ironically when he takes off his shirt in public. Which is _a lot_.

Ben… who started crashing on her couch every year, after Finn moved in with Rose, spending the night with her on the anniversary of her parents’ car accident… the night Rey became an orphan at ten years old. Ben… who eats wings with her every Tuesday night, and who goes with her to all her girlie movies, and constantly makes her laugh.

 _Huh_.

 

* * *

 

“She looks good, man,” Poe says with a dip of his chin and a bro-code nudge of Ben’s shoulder.

Ben doesn’t know what the hell Poe is talking about. “Who?” he asks, sticking a finger between his neck and his tie, which suddenly feels way too tight.

Poe’s eyes widen like Ben has just spoken Egyptian. “Rey, dumbass. Your date? I heard you two finally got your act together, but that it was she who had to ask _you_ out, so I guess you lose some points for that.”

“Dude. What the fuck are you talking about.”

It’s not even a question. Because Ben can’t really be bothered with such trivial gossip. He’s sure this news has come from Paige, Poe’s wife and Rose’s sister, who seems to be hell-bent on acting like Ben and Rey are soulmates. 

Which they are not.

They’re friends. Who’ve come to the wedding together. As friends. 

Poe shrugs, and Ben watches as his friend’s eyes go across the hotel ballroom toward the bar where Rey is currently being served a rum and coke. She’s standing in her lavender dress, hip cocked and one elbow resting on the bar top, her cheek dimpling as she flashes the hipster bartender a beatific smile.

“I’m just saying,” Poe says, taking his time with the words, letting them sink in, before patting Ben’s back and walking off to catch up with his wife, “you _might_ wanna make your move.”

Ben rolls his eyes. _Make my move? That’s ridiculous._

Except his eyes are immediately drawn back to Rey, and it’s like she feels his gaze on the back of her head because she whips her head around and flashes Ben an even brighter grin than the one Hipster got moments before, and Ben swells with pride… and _shit_. He takes a step toward their table and cautiously adjusts himself because something else is swelling, too.

Rey’s walking toward him. She _does_ look really good.

The lavender color of her dress makes her perpetually tanned skin glow. Her hair is done up in these three little loopy buns, the sides slicked back and shiny but loose tendrils curling as they frame her face. As she approaches their table, he can tell her eyelashes are extra long tonight, and he wonders if she’s maybe got those fake ones or extensions on because they’re so dark and fanning so beautifully, he feels mesmerized by them every time she blinks.

As soon as she’s standing beside him, the little stirrer straw of her drink tucked between her berry lips, Ben sees she’s got a little rhinestone on the outside of each eyebrow. It’s fucking hot.

His pulse is thrumming in his veins. He licks his lips.

_Fuck it._

He turns to Rey and gives her his best half-smile, the one he uses when he wants her to order custard after their wings just so he can eat half of her cone… the one she can never turn down. “Wanna dance?”

Rey’s tongue darts out around her little straw and Ben thinks he might pass out. He doesn’t know what the hell is happening to him. She digs her top teeth into the pillow of her bottom lip and looks up at him from those sinfully long lashes. “Sure,” she replies, shrugging.

Grabbing her hand, Ben has Rey out on the dance floor for the next twenty minutes. He’s sweating beneath his jacket, she’s looking like walking fire, and they’re both smiling like doofuses. 

He’s about to ask her if she’d like another drink -- because, hell, he could sure use something cold and strong right about now considering the ridiculous thoughts running through his mind at the moment -- when Rose and Finn come crashing into them.

“It’s time!” Finn announces, his eyes wide with excitement.

“For what?”

“For the rooftop bar,” Rose states, giggling.

“Man, you guys are totally trashed and living your best lives right now, aren’t you?” Ben teases.

Rose swats him on the arm and looks directly at Rey. “Get your man and come upstairs with us. It’s gorgeous out and the fireworks will be starting soon.”

 _Your man._ There he goes again, swelling with pride and… other things.

_Huh._

 

* * *

 

The night breeze has cooled their heated skin, and Ben feels Rey shiver. He pulls her closer against him, wrapping his arms around her back. She fits right under his chin, looping her arms around his back, too, as they sway together.

They’ve been on the rooftop for at least an hour. Finn and Rose went back downstairs to start saying goodbye to guests as the hour grew late and the official end of their reception drew near. Ben bought Rey three more rum and cokes, and himself two snifters of bourbon.

It felt good, that warm whisky slipping down his throat, loosening any remaining inhibitions.

But nothing feels fucking better than Rey tucked into his chest right now, the New Year’s fireworks long over, the crowd on the rooftop bar settled and mellow.

The live version of Bob Marley’s ‘No Woman, No Cry’ starts to play. Rey’s hips start moving side to side, and Ben begins rocking with her to the reggae beat of the song. As the lyrics begin, Ben sings along, directly into Rey’s ear, his best Rastafarian voice at play.

“Oh God,” Rey laughs, “please don’t.”

“What? You don’t like my singing voice?”

“It’s pitiful, you turd,” she retorts, chancing a glance up at him.

Ben’s brow lifts and he just stares at her. Her beautiful hazel eyes. Those insane lashes framing them. The little freckles across the bridge of her nose he can just make out in the dim starlight. “I think you love it.”

She doesn’t answer. 

Ben starts singing “everything’s gonna be alright” on repeat along with the chorus of the song.

Rey lays her head back against Ben’s chest and he feels her arms tighten around him just a bit.

 _Yes_ , he thinks, _it’s all good. And it’s all gonna be alright._

 

* * *

 

They’re in Rey’s dark hotel room. It’s nearly two in the morning.

“Are you drunk?” Rey asks from above him, her body pressed against his from shoulder to toes.

Ben swallows. “Not anymore. You?”

He feels rather than sees her shake her head. He can barely make out her silhouette in the darkened, unfamiliar space. “No.”

“Good.”

“Yeah, good,” she agrees before he feels her lips, soft and sweet and way too sinful, brush against his.

Ben’s tongue swipes out to taste her mouth. He groans. “You taste better than any donut I’ve ever had.”

“Oh dear Lord,” Rey huffs a laugh. “You’re impossible, you know that?”

“Why am I impossible?”

“Because I’m trying to seriously make-out with you here, and you’re cracking jokes.”

Ben tilts his head and angles his mouth closer to Rey’s ear. “What if I don’t wanna make out with you?” he whispers into the shell of her ear.

Above him, Rey freezes. She swallows and her voice sounds hollow as she asks, “You don’t?”

Ben shakes his head. “I actually really wanna fuck you.”

Her forehead tucks against his collarbone, her bones liquifying, a rush of desire slicking between her legs, every hair on her body rising with unbelievable, unquenchable _want_.

“Jesus _Christ,_ Ben.” Her voice quivers.

“Is that a yes?”

 

* * *

 

Rolling her hips over his, she feels him hard against the damp cotton of her panties.

She feels his hands as they cradle her face and bring her lips to his for a searing kiss that makes Rey’s toes curl. She feels her nipples harden as they brush up against the thin organza of her dress and Ben’s dress shirt, his suit jacket long gone. 

She feels her heart pounding in her chest.

She feels her heart… _waking_ _up_... blinking wide in the bright light of this incredible feeling at the intersection of affection and attraction, stretching cautiously, but knowing without a doubt that Ben’s right: everything’s gonna be alright.

And Rose is right. Because Rey knows... she _will_ be next.

She slides her hand down his broad chest, brushes her knuckles along Ben’s length, presses her mouth against his neck and breathes in the bourbon and mint and amazing boy smell of him… a smell Rey’s known for years, a smell she’s loved for years, without ever realizing it.

“That’s a yes.”


End file.
